This is the first of a series (part 2, 3, 4) of vignettes from my recent travels.

Getting Across in Tallinn

After a long day of walking around the Old Town in Tallinn, Estonia
I relaxed in a park just outside.
That's where I met a burly man puffing away on his cigarette. Many
Estonians are of Russian origin and speak only Russian. It turned out
he spoke little English and I didn't speak any Russian so we didn't
get very far beyond names. His name was Vladimir.

That's when his seventh-grader son Simon, who was playing nearby, came
to our rescue and served as an interpreter. Simon had not learned the
fine points of interpreting though. When I asked Vladimir what he did
for a living, Simon didn't bother to translate it for his dad. He simply
answered it himself, "He's a fireman."
"Oh, you are a firefighter," I said.

Vladimir picked up keywords in this conversation and said something to
his son, perhaps: Tell him I save lives.
Simon said to me, "He saves lives."

That conveyed to me the essence of what language is: something to make
ourselves understood, to get across what we have on our minds, to share
what is important to us.

While we chatted, Vladimir kept asking about his son, "How's his English?"
"Excellent," I said. Even though he didn't speak the language, its importance
was not lost on him.

"Have you been to the US?" I asked.
"No, but my aunt lives in the US," Simon said.
"Bronx," Vladimir said in his thick accent.
"But I have been to Belorussiya," Simon piped in.
It took me a moment to realize what he meant -- the place I knew as
Belarus. His grandparents lived there.

Soon Vladimir's wife stopped by. As it turned out she was also in the
same business -- she was a nurse. She didn't speak English either.

It was past 10pm, but the sun hadn't set yet. People were still strolling
in the park, on the sidewalks, and everywhere.

From: Rick Schwarz (e_j_schwarz yahoo.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--corps
Def: A group of persons associated in a common organization or engaged in a common activity.

Corps is a particularly difficult word for some people, in part because it
so closely resembles corpse. In the 1980s, I worked for a federal agency
that was often teamed with the US Army Corps of Engineers for design and
construction management service. The Corps was often seen as inflexible and
uncreative when responding to challenging projects. Some of my coworkers
and many people I worked with at state agencies, local government, and in
the general public pronounced the word corps as corpse. Sometimes it was
difficult to tell if the mispronunciation was due to ignorance or if it
was malicious. Either way, it was amusing (at least the first few times).

Rick Schwarz, Portland, Oregon

From: Lenny Maughan (freethoughtguy gmail.com)
Subject: Corps

Long before Apple (formerly Apple Computer) was associated with music,
the Beatles created their own cleverly-named conglomerate as a tax shelter:
Apple Corps.

Lenny Maughan, San Francisco, California

From: Lane Reynolds (lane.l.reynolds navy.mil)
Subject: corps

A corps is also a specific military formation consisting of two or more
divisions. Two or more corps make up an army. In the introduction to her
wonderful book covering the early weeks of the First World War, The Guns
of August, Barbara Tuchman
mentions her consternation with the practice of using Roman numerals to
designate corps in all of the armies involved. For some reason the practice
bothered her but she said nothing could be done about it. Indeed nothing
at all can be done about it.

I was doing a long-term subbing assignment for a French teacher, because
there were no other subs with any knowledge of French. I had been a Spanish
teacher for 30 years and had studied 12 hours of French along the way,
making me the best candidate.

First year classes were no problem, but the second year class was getting
just beyond my level. One day the word faux came up when the students were
asked to respond vrai or faux -- true or false. I did a little spontaneous
lesson about the phrase faux pas. Not one of the 28 teenagers had ever
heard the phrase used in English. After explaining that it literally means
false step, I further explained that we use it to mean an accidental social
blunder. I gave the example of inviting my niece and her new husband to
dinner, ordering pepperoni and sausage pizza for all of us, then remembering
that his religion did not permit him to eat pork. I predicted that, as it
often happens when one learns a new word, within a few days, maybe even
as long as a week or a month, they would hear faux pas being used on TV,
read it in a book, or notice it in a real-life situation.

Then we began watching the video lesson in which it seemed to me that the
boy was attempting to ask the girl out on a date, but she kept coming up
with excuses. Since it was the second year class, I was not quite sure that
I was understanding everything, so I paused the video.

Just as I was about to ask my question, a male vice-principal knocked on
the door and asked to speak to one of the girls. As she was walking toward
the door to speak to him, I posed my pending question concerning what was
going on in the video: "Is he trying to ask her for a date?" Total silence.

I turned to the class and asked, "Well, is he or not?" Pointing to the
screen, I said: "It seems like every time he mentions going somewhere,
she has some excuse for not going." "The VIDEO!" someone yelled, breaking
the silence. Then everyone started laughing. Offended by their making fun
of me, I asked, "What's so funny? My French is not that good, so I just
didn't understand. What did you think I was talking about?"

Everyone pointed to the door where the student was speaking to the
administrator, both unaware of what was happening in the classroom. I was
so embarrassed!! Then one of the students said, "Well, I guess we got a
real-life example of a faux pax sooner than we expected!"

Pam Kaatz, Denton, Texas

From: Mary Barber (master tajar.com)
Subject: faux pas

As a teacher, I try to connect with my students. My middle schoolers know
me to have a joke or pun to share. I teach at our foreign language schools
(Spanish and French). I have asked my students at the French school,
"what is a dog's prosthetic called?" or "what is another name for a
step-father?" Both answers are today's word, faux pas!

Mary Barber, Columbus, Ohio

From: Colin Carton (boxey live.co.uk)
Subject: faux pas

Reminds me that the Clint Eastwood film production company is named "Malpaso
Productions" See Wikipedia
for an interesting discussion of the reasons this name was chosen.

Colin Carton, London, UK

From: Anne Golden (ag outtengolden.com)
Subject: Pince-nez
Def: A pair of eyeglasses held in place by a spring that grips the nose.

One of the great moments in my marriage occurred when my husband referred
to "Chief Joseph of the Pince-Nez". (link)

Pince-nez (and lorgnettes) were more likely a fashion statement as opposed to
an intermediate step in the structural evolution of eyeglasses. Eyeglasses
had temples (side arms) long before 1866. Among many more common examples,
the bifocal eyeglasses of notable inventor Benjamin Franklin had temples,
and the equally famous George Washington had spectacles with temples that
telescoped for smaller folding space.

Sally M. Chetwynd, Wakefield, Massachusetts

From: Duncan Rodseth (drodseth icon.co.za)
Subject: Fleur de lys

I was tripped up by the pronunciation of this in France as I had always
known it to be pronounced without the final "s". I checked in the Oxford
dictionary and found that this is indeed the official English pronunciation
-- how curious. I was staying in the Hotel du Lys and when I told a French
friend the name of the hotel he heard "lit" -- bed. "You are staying in
the hotel of the bed? But all hotels in Paris have beds!"

Duncan Rodseth, Johannesburg, South Africa

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

Languages, like our bodies, are in a perpetual flux, and stand in need of
recruits to supply those words that are continually falling through disuse.
-Cornelius Conway Felton, educator (1807-1862)

Aug 5, 2012

This week's theme
Words that have the plural spelled the same but pronounced differently